Terms of Foreign Origin in Kinesiological Terminology

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyse the words of foreign origin that have entered the Croatian language and that are used within the domain of kinesiology, the science of human movement. The sample consisted of 659 technical terms that were ultimately categorised into eight categories: terms of English, French, Latin, Italian, German and Greek origin, and the categories proper names and other languages. The allocation of terms per category was expressed both in frequency distributions and in percentages. It is evident that the terms of English origin were the most frequent ones (26.6%), as well as proper names (26.6%), followed by the terms from French (10.9%), Latin (9.5%) and Italian (9%). There are some technical terms that are borrowings for which there are no originally Croatian translation equivalents, and for a number of them such equivalents might never be found. However, it is possible to find Croatian counterparts for the other terms of foreign origin which could appropriately denote the concepts in question. In the end, it is also concluded that the international nature of kinesiological vocabulary helps in developing communicative competence in Croatian sportsmen when using English as a foreign language

    Similar works